đ Welcome to the Manic Girl Fall
This week, I wanted to try something new. I've been excited about this fallâfor me, it brings a new chapter at work, more writing and exploring, and a better wardrobe! And I'm lucky to have my friend Rita Popova, who shares my (slightly manic) state of mind and my love for all things fall!
Rita is a poet, an aspiring mystic, and an AI tsarina developing product strategy behind Replika and Blush. In the past month or so, we've been texting back and forth about all the fall-themed things that inspire our creative work, our reading lists, and our mood this season, and below is a little list of inspirations!
Anyaâs list:
Pairing books and perfume (and investigating the rodent agenda of the early 2000s)
I've recently started following several newsletters and podcasts about perfume, and of course, TikTok started showing me videos about it. This one is a perfect Venn diagram for #BookTok and perfume reviews, pairing the Redwall fantasy series about mice and badgers that I admired as a child with a fall-inspired niche fragrance, Harvest Mouse by Zoologist. An incredible companion piece for this video is a deep dive into rodent-themed animated movies released in 2006 and 2007.
Looking for ways to rethink the infinite scroll
I understand the irony of mentioning this next to a TikTok video, but I can't recommend this article enoughâone of my favorite writers and cultural critics, Samantha Culp, published a piece for WIRED that is focused on alternatives to Newsfeeds and the origins of the word "scroll:"
"While we typically scroll in isolation through context-collapsing timelines, the Chinese handscroll was social media in a different sense. It was meant to be viewed collectively in small groups, perhaps during an evening of drinking and discussion."
Hoping that this fall, I'll be able to cultivate collective yet intimate experiences for consuming and understanding culture.
Getting inspired by 90s interior design magazines
For a while now, I've been collecting issues of Nest magazine, a quarterly that was in print from the late 1990s through the early 2000s. It featured houses and apartments designed by their inhabitants rather than by interior designersâthe magazine founder, Joseph Holtzman, was obsessed with the idea of a private self manifested in the lived environment. Reading it feels like a breath of fresh air compared to algorithmic recommendations and lifeless AD Open Door videos featuring celebrities' homes.
Using Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute resources instead of Pinterest
I discovered the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute (CARI) a couple of months ago, and now it's the right time to explore it. CARI is a group of artists and researchers that study and collect visuals that represent the "ever-expanding landscape of 1970s-present consumer design." Browsing through CARI collections feels like a surreal balancing actâyouâre either feeling nostalgic for things that you knew well but could never accurately describe (Corporate Grunge!) or recognizing the source of inspiration for something incredibly current (like the 90s Renaissance Revival or the 80s Deco-Luxe). Lots of food for thought for a dark October night! đđ°
Ritaâs list:
Acoustics, Sound and Hearing (especially DIY acoustics)
My husband, a brilliant engineer and a 5x Pisces who is primarily motivated by the pursuit of beauty, recently got into the art of building DIY speakers (that was his birthday present to me). Because he is endlessly patient with my questions, I am learning a lot about the perception of sound, the kind of decisions and tradeoffs you must make to be a channel for someone's creation, the (often futile) pursuit of fidelity, etc. Any technical consideration very quickly spills over into the philosophy of space and time, universe, and reality. I am by no means an expert, like AT ALLâbut I find it all fascinating.
I recommend this article by Sasha Frere-JonesâCorner, Club, Cathedral, Cocoonâit is more about high-end acoustics (rather than DIY), but he talks about sound and hearing in a very interesting way, and also touches on why audiophiles are so annoying.
I ALSO recommend spending some time on the charming website of Siegfried Linkwitz, a late loudspeaker expert, engineer, scientist, and philosopher who lived and worked in Sea Ranch (a place I love and hope to spend more time in!).
Here's a quote I pulled from Linkwitz at random to give you an idea of the content:
"What you hear is not the air pressure variation in itself but what has drawn your attention in the streams of superimposed air pressure variations at your eardrums An acoustic event has dimensions of Time, Tone, Loudness and Space Have they been recorded and rendered sensibly?"
Going to a museum with somebody you love, choosing an artwork, and spending at least 20-30 minutes looking at it together and talking about it
You can know someone for years, and still it will SHOCK YOU how much you'll learn about them thru this exerciseâwhat jumps out to them, things they donât even register, details they find funny or beautiful or terrifying.
It also feels like an incredible luxury to spend a chunk of time with an artwork, to penetrate it beyond the surface, and allow your impressions to ferment. My dream is actually to go to a museum alone and pick a painting and look at it for 3 hours straight, with only bathroom breaks as permittable interruptionsâsomething Iâve learned that Harvard art students do.
âđŠ¶ Doing exercises for wrists/palms and feet
My hands hurt ALL THE TIME. In fact, I had a dream recently where a hostess of a GOOD LUCK CASINO (an invention of my psyche, a casino where everyone wins) told me my hands hurt because I have never learned to write the American letters correctly, and now, I never will.
Be it as it may, I started a course of study this fall with the incredible Dages Juvelier Keates, a writer, dancer, performer, and Katonah yoga teacher. (Read Dages' book, Radical Acts of Embodiment, to learn more about Katonah yoga. It's a fantastic book, I can't recommend it enough.) Dages gave me some exercises to do, and the ones for my wrists/palms and feet turned out to be surprisingly transformative. I do not think it really matters which exercises you doâjust show your hands and feet some love. They long for it; they NEED it!!!
PRIMORDIAL CONFIDENCE
PRIMORDIAL CONFIDENCE was one of the subjects on the curriculum when I studied with Ariana Reines at Naropa University in June. Our class meditated on two calligraphy works by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the founder of Naropa and one of the foremost teachers of Buddhism in the US. I am not going to explain what PRIMORDIAL CONFIDENCE means, because it is instantly understandable. I know you know what it means. But I had to confront a lot of fears recently, fear of aging, death, sickness, injustice, public embarrassment, etc (facing your fears: both in and out for this fall), and I found two things to be most helpful: PRIMORDIAL CONFIDENCE and a sense of humor.
And a few quick recommendations:
đż Gentle Confrontation by Loraine James (good album)
đ Rachel Cusk trilogy (I know everyone has read it... but if you haven't... DO IT!!!! Especially Transitâthe best book of the three)
âïž Drinking coffee (I don't know if it's the GILMORE GIRLS influenceâmore on that belowâbut I abandoned drinking tea and am currently at ~4 cups of coffee a day)
đŁ Fantasizing about blowing up your life (in detail)
đżÂ Taking a shower that is boiling hot at first, and then turning off the hot water to make it super COLD and icy 𧊠Wearing cozy, thick cotton socks (like these onesâmakes an excellent giftâAnya has received at least two pairs from me and hopefully can confirm?)
Together, weâre:
đ Reading Paradise Lost by John Miltonâthis fall, weâre enrolling into Ariana Reinesâ Invisible College to study Miltonâs work. Reines will focus on drawing inspiration from this epic poem to understand how we can relate to technological power of today.
đč Listening to Carol Kingâshe is the queen of fall and a great inspiration for all the curly girls everywhere!
𧣠Watching Gilmore Girlsâboth of us have been living in the U.S. for almost six years now, and this fall we finally give up and are starting to watch an all time favorite Christian Girl Fall classic. And we WILL report back!
Stay tuned and happy fall!